Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Joan Rivers is a warrior in an unconventional sense. Yes, she refuses to give up as much of the stage, attention and warmth from the spotlight as we shall allow her. But why? Because she stepped on stage at a very young age and loved that much, yet we have since moved on past her as a collective. We have chosen to focus on her prodigy and tossed aside the innovator. This is a shame, a travesty even. She is as sharp, biting, funny and shocking as ever. Even at 75 (her age when this was filmed), Joan Rivers is as abrasive and honest as ever refusing to go quietly into the long, dark night. We should embrace her much more than we have for all she has offered us.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is the single greatest tool for that argument. Even once we have deemed them old and no longer useful because they are old and we like something shiny and new, celebrities are people too. This documentary could have become something of an embellishment into crafting Joan Rivers as a martyred and heroic figure. It isn’t. It’s an accurate and honest portrait of an artist at work. I thought a more fitting title could have been: Portrait of an Artist at Work.

This is a warts-and-all portrait of Rivers as a human being and as an icon. It opens with a makeup free close-up of her face, which looks better than the heavily made-up mask she wears so frequently. We see her taunt and damaged skin. Damaged from the plastic surgery she has had, from age and from the massive amounts of makeup she wears which clogs pores and causes blemishes. By the time the opening credits have ended, “Joan Rivers” as we think of her is there before us. And throughout the film we see behind “Joan Rivers,” the celebrity, and into Joan Rivers, the human being. What was left on the cutting room floor must have been really something because what is left in presents a complicated and honest vision of her.

I walked into the film with a sense of respect and admiration for Rivers as a comedy icon and for continuing to go out there and make us laugh. I walked out with a deeper appreciation of her for going out to continue to make us laugh. She is right about comedy: it is there to point out the absurdities of life and help us laugh and deal with it. She claims that comedy is the lowest form of art in the interview series Girls Who Do Comedy with Dawn French, but I would offer a counterargument. Comedy is not lower, for as long as tragedy has existed there has been comedy. And comedy is harder to bring out of us. And here she is, now 77, consistently edgy, funny, caustic, acidic and vulnerable. She is a great artist. Comedy is not a lower art, just the oldest variation of performance art.